UK anthem to be revised?
Posted by admin on 06 Dec 2007 at 9:37 pm | Tagged as: anthems, meanings, news
Maybe I should start a tag just for national anthems. They seem to be be regularly in the news. The BBC reports that there are moves to rewrite some of the lyrics to the UK’s “God Save the Queen”. I must admit that I don’t sing it much myself, so I never noticed that there was a sixth verse. And that verse is a trifle, uh, controversial for a national anthem. I don’t know any other anthem that call for the defeat of one of its own peoples!
The sixth verse is one in which the rebellious Scots are called on to be “crushed”. Check it out:
Lord grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
And like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush.
God save the Queen!
Lord Goldsmith is currently advising Prime Minister Gordon Brown on citizenship (already, what does that mean?) and mentioned that several people had raised the issue. I’m not surprised! If I was Scots, I’d be pretty angry to have that in the national anthem. According to the BBC, Lord Goldsmith said, “The review is about different ways of sharing our tradition and national identity… What we have to look at is different ways of saying what it is that links the country together.” Um, is that a euphemism or what?